I was in Paris over Christmas and apart from seeing relatives and enjoying the city I spent quite a bit of time wandering around museums and exhibitions.
One of the exhibitions that I was lucky enough to get to was the Jean-Paul Goude exhibition in Les Arts Decoratifs. While the name didn’t mean anything to me I recognised a lot of the images. Some, such as the series of Grace Jones work, is instantly recognizable. Other work, like that for Galeries LaFayette, might not be as well known outside France.
I’d have to admit that I don’t go to art exhibitions that often, possibly as a “reaction” to my youth, when I probably overdosed! The exhibition’s layout and presentation was very slick, though in common with other popular destinations in Paris, there were far too many people.
The space is dominated by the train that Goude built for the French bicentenary in 1989, while the surrounding rooms are laid out more as an installation than a static exhibition.
One of the more interesting parts was a room that showed some of his advertising billboards from the Paris metro. Here’s a very short video that gives you a taste:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/koz5rgmqQlI[/youtube]
What makes the installation video so interesting is that the metro train appears to move from one screen to another seamlessly, while each screen shows a different advertising billboard.
More information on the exhibition is on the official site
Related articles
- T Magazine: Jean-Paul Goude’s Bodies of Work (tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Jean-Paul Goude: Looking Back (theartfulblog.com)
- Goudemalion: Jean-Paul Goude une Rétrospective (vingtparismagazine.com)
- Paris retrospective celebrates ad man Goude (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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